


now towards the open sea

by mapped



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Extended Metaphors, First Kiss, Greek Mythology - Freeform, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-12
Updated: 2016-07-12
Packaged: 2018-07-23 14:22:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7466691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mapped/pseuds/mapped
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Whoever heard of Theseus falling in love with the Minotaur?</p><p>(In which Silver spends way too much time comparing his situation to a Greek myth.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	now towards the open sea

**Author's Note:**

> Title from a simile describing the labyrinth that contains the Minotaur in Book 8 of Ovid’s Metamorphoses: “ _Just as the playful waters of the Maeander in Phrygia flow this way and that, without any consistency, as the river, turning to meet itself, sees its own advancing waves, flowing now towards its source and now towards the open sea, always changing its direction, so Daedalus constructed countless wandering paths and was himself scarcely able to find his way back to the entrance, so confusing was the maze._ ” (translation by Mary M. Innes)

There is a story about a monster in a labyrinth, a hero come to slay the monster and a girl who serves as the hero’s guide. An old story from a long-ruined civilisation. Silver read it somewhere once, or heard it from someone. It doesn’t matter. The story is what matters.

The monster was deemed too hideous for the light when it was born, so a labyrinth was built to conceal it from day and to confine it in black solitude. But it demanded blood, so blood was given it. The sons and daughters of a great city, sent in droves to meet their ends in the tangled routes of the unlit maze and in the monster’s ugly, gory mouth.

But a hero came from the great city, sword in hand, meaning to defeat the monster, and a young princess fell in love with him. She put a ball of thread in his fist and asked him to come back to her by means of the thread. She would be his way out of the labyrinth.

The first time Madi put her hand on his and told him that maybe he needed another to hold the tether and find a way out, this was the story that arose in Silver’s mind. He had expressed to her his concern that he would be unable to return from the depths to which he descended when he was trying to connect with Flint, and it seemed to him that Madi was saying: _I will be your Ariadne. I will give you the thread._

In retrospect the pain and the fever might have addled his brain a little then—who was he to think himself Theseus, one of the mightiest heroes known to the ancient Greeks?

But, it must be admitted, the analogy is still apt in many ways.

It’s not that he was aiming to _kill_ Flint or anything, God no, but Flint has always been the monster in all the stories. And trying to get close to Flint has proven to be a nearly Herculean labour, if it isn’t too hubristic to liken himself to yet another of the Greek heroes. His Captain is as monstrous as the Minotaur, and as isolated from the world. Silver has seen Flint, has seen the death and destruction wrought by him, the blood on his face and his hands. He has seen the labyrinthine walls that Flint has put up around himself, the darkness that encompasses him.

And Madi herself, princess of the Maroons, has offered to help him navigate that labyrinth, so that he might retrace his steps and escape from it alive once more. 

What neither of them planned for, though, is this: the fact that he would want to stay there, inside that labyrinth, inside that darkness, where the monster lives.

Theseus would have forsaken Ariadne one way or another: the story goes that the princess boards his ship, looking to be made the victorious hero’s wife, but he forgets her on a desolate beach somewhere. She is saved by a god who marries her and preserves her fame as a constellation in the sky, which isn’t half bad as far as fates of women go in the tales Silver’s heard.

Still, a Theseus is certainly not meant to abandon his Ariadne _this_ way, by wilfully refusing to leave the labyrinth at all even though he yet draws breath, because he has made _friends_ with the Minotaur. Because he has whispered to the Minotaur and learnt its secrets.

When he felt the brittle fragility of Dufresne’s life crumble and crunch under his iron boot, when he looked at Flint afterwards and confessed how good it felt, that was the moment he first had an inkling of this. This errant yearning to remain in the labyrinth he has found himself in.

The next day, he could not tell his Ariadne the truth, a truth that he was only beginning to realise. He respected Madi and was coming to care for her; before her, he wished to appear every inch the gleaming hero he was not. He could not tell her that he liked where he was rather more than he had anticipated.

Then, after his disciplining of Dobbs, Flint spoke to him of darkness, of his experience of it, and Silver wanted nothing more than to know that darkness with Flint at his side. And it felt as if Flint wanted it too, as if Flint was extending some kind of invitation to him: _stay here, with me, and I will teach you how to walk these deceptive paths without any light to see by, until you have made them your home just as I have. Stay._

Silver pointed out as much to Flint— _I can’t tell if this was a warning or a welcome_ —and Flint looked at him like the breath had been knocked out of him. Like he never thought anybody would hear the words of a monster and even so much as _consider_ greeting them as a welcome.

Now, Silver stares at the blood drying on Flint’s face. Dobbs’ corpse lies a few yards away. Dobbs did exactly as Silver asked and died for it. What power he holds, that he can make men lay down their lives for him with unflinching ardour. It overwhelms him more than shattering a skull beneath his boot did.

Hornigold’s body is not far off either. Silver passed it on the way and briefly wished he’d been there to see Flint kill the man, momentarily wondered if in turn Flint ever regretted not having been witness to him taking Dufresne’s life.

He stares at the blood drying on Flint’s face, and he thinks of the story again. 

Madi is across the water, waiting for him. His thread out of the labyrinth.

And maybe he needs her still, maybe he will one day awaken and want to shake himself from this nightmare.

But today is not that day.

How did Theseus feel when he stood before the Minotaur, ready to stain his sword with its death and lay claim to eternal glory?

Whatever Theseus felt, Silver is almost certain that this is not it. Silver sees the Minotaur’s terrible, bloodied countenance and he does not tremble before it, nor does he want it subdued or vanquished. He only desires to remake himself in its image.

He reaches for its warm, rough hand.

He is barely aware of what he is doing, a loud pounding in his ears as he leads Flint behind a tree and then pushes him against it and kisses him.

Flint’s mouth opens for him, just as it did last night, when Flint had come to him and asked, “If I tell you that my words regarding the darkness we both meet with were meant as a welcome, but only for one who would gladly see them as such, what would be your instinct?”

“I would embrace them as all such welcomes seek to be embraced,” he had answered.

Flint had searched his eyes and then laid a hesitant hand on his cheek before kissing him, softly. “I could not go into battle without knowing if this was something I could have,” he said, eyes shining in the torchlight when he broke the kiss, and his voice was gentle in a way Silver had never heard.

“Now you know,” Silver had murmured and pressed their lips together again, and they had kissed, mouths wet and open, until Flint bid him good night and good luck and slipped away.

Now, Silver has Flint against a tree and Flint smells like metal and smoke and he feels fucking amazing, his broad shoulders and his firm chest that Silver runs his hands over as he kisses him hungrily like he could swallow Flint’s soul and be nourished by that for the rest of his days. He wills himself to be lost in that labyrinth forever, the way out be damned. He will be a monster with Flint, the two of them in the dark where no one else can touch them. There will always be the risk that one of them will devour the other. They are monsters—what else can they do? But Silver told Flint of this risk, and Flint kissed him anyway. Flint is kissing him now.

If Flint deems it a risk worth taking, then who is Silver to deny him? To deny the taste of Flint’s lips, the heat of his skin?

Flint stops their kiss and brushes his hand down through the ends of Silver’s curls, lays it flat on Silver’s chest where his heart beats thuddingly within, and asks, “You were not hurt?”

Even the Minotaur was half-human, Silver remembers.

“I am quite sound,” he says. “You?”

“If I have been injured, I do not feel any pain,” Flint says. “Only such joy as I have not felt in a long time.”

He allows a second for Silver to see his lips quirk in a shy smile, and then he ducks down to nip Silver’s throat and Silver shudders, thrilled by Flint’s admission as much as by Flint’s teeth on his neck. He clutches Flint’s waist, holds Flint to him as close as he can. 

They are both half-man, half-monster. Perhaps together they have just enough to make a whole human between the two of them. Or perhaps they will simply bring out the monster in each other all the more.

It does not matter. Flint has been a monster alone for far too long. It is time he is joined by another, and Silver—Silver has forgotten what it was like to ever want to see the light again, if this is what the darkness promises.

Deeper into the labyrinth he goes.

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on [tumblr](http://reluming.tumblr.com/)! Comments are always appreciated. <3


End file.
